Compound Interest
by thebluninja
Summary: When Saren attacks the Citadel, lots of people are rounded up by the geth. But they never manage to catch everyone. Written for the February contest in Aria's Afterlife. Warning: Contains large quantities of badass volus!


_Author's Note: This is just a fun little ditty for the February OC contest in Aria's Afterlife. After making a smart-ass comment, I had the idea for a volus accountant who manages to survive Saren's attack on the Citadel ... by baffling the geth with economic BS. And yes, I'm not interrupting his dialog all over the place with *ksht* because honestly, it's f***ing annoying to write and to read. He's volus, you can insert it yourself when you read it._

* * *

Leedar sat in front of his screen, merrily typing away. It was only three weeks until business taxes were due on the Citadel, and business was good. Twelve new clients this week alone, as word of mouth got around. Just shaving off a quarter of a percentage of his fee was enough to save some of these businesses a hundred credits or more, and while each individual loss hurt, the new clients on his roster more than made up for it. Especially when next year they'd get charged the regular rate, and signed a five year exclusivity contract.

Right as he reached for the save command, all the power in his office failed. White-hot fury … well, alright, lukewarm annoyance, really … gripped him. Sliding off the stool, Leedar waddled over towards the door, only to find it completely unresponsive. His omni-tool still worked, so it wasn't a rival accountant trying to sully his reputation. Though that hadn't worked since he hired that quarian, Kol-something, to maintain his offices.

The manual handle for the door was, naturally, placed in easy reach for an asari or turian, which made it obnoxiously difficult for volus to activate. But it's not like he couldn't adapt to this. Since he'd put forth his proposal to his clan ten years ago, and moved onto the Citadel for good, he'd been adapting to the annoying bias of height-superiority.

A quick button push started a little pump in his suit, and chambers in the soles of his suit began filling with pressurized air, raising his height by a solid five centimeters. Sometimes, he liked to use it when dealing with clients, as even that little bit of height set him apart from other volus. With that added reach, the handle was still not easy, but at least possible to reach.

Several cranks on the handle left the door raised far enough for him to slip through, and deliciously awkward for any tall C-Sec officer. Outside the office, the whole hallway was dark, an unusual status for Kithoi ward. All of the doors had sealed, though the storeroom door was being cranked open as he watched.

"Do you know what's going on?" Leedar asked.

"Not a clue, I was filing the records like you wanted, and suddenly bam, the lights are off and the door's sealed," Kol replied. "And yes, I did our maintenance two days ago. You didn't forget to pay the power bill, did you?"

"Of course not!" Leedar protested. That had only happened once, and it wasn't forgetting the bill so much as accidentally setting the payment one day too late, to maximize his interest in a short-term investment. Citadel Electric had not been amused.

The two suited figures stared at each other, then down the hall at the entrance to their office space. "So, what is going on?" Kol asked.

"Why am I supposed to know? Just because I'm your boss?" Leedar almost wished he could do one of those dramatic human gestures, like pressing a hand to his face. Volus just weren't built to be that flexible.

"Well, yeah," Kol said. "Let's look outside, at least."

Reluctantly, Leedar followed his employee to their door. It had only split open a small amount when he backed hurriedly away. The quarian glanced outside as well, pulling out a tiny pistol and cradling it like a security blanket.

Their office door was on a walkway with a good view of Kithoi Point. Below were ranks of geth, pouring out of a dropship that somehow got inside the station arms before they closed. Those geth were rounding up anyone they could capture, and impaling them on spikes. It looked to be a slow process, so a group of geth turned their weapons on a batch of restrained captives, gunning them down in perfect synchronicity.

"That … is bad," Leedar said. Kol just nodded, his body tense as his suit fingers squeaked on the pistol grip. "Is that your only weapon?"

The quarian stared down. "You're going to fire a gun," he asked in disbelief.

"I don't believe I'm going to get a choice in the matter." One stubby arm pointed out the door. Across the boulevard, two geth were looking at the open door, probably spotting them using infrared.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Kol protested. "I can't take on two geth with this! They have assault rifles! The only thing I could cobble together is a data transmitter, and that's not even going to slow them down!"

"Actually, you build it. I have an … idea," Leedar said. His omni flared to life as he started tapping rapidly away, filling his display with a scrolling display of mathematical gibberish. It would take the geth a few minutes to get down that building and up theirs. Hopefully that was long enough.

Kol came running back with a jury-rigged device, thrusting it at the volus. "They'll be here any moment," he said, pulling the pistol back out.

With a deliberate press of a holographic button, he uploaded the data into the device. The first geth stepped up to the doorway, rifle pointed their direction and electronic warbling echoing down the hall. Leedar pressed the transmit button.

Both geth seemed to freeze in place, though when Kol went to open the door, the rifle tracked him in slow motion. "What did you do to them?"

"I sent them an open-ended equation, asking them to calculate the interest rate, changing daily based upon volus, turian, and asari astrology, for a three-thousand year old account," the volus answered. With the door now open, he just ducked under the gun, twisted it out of the geth's hand, and tipped it over the balcony railing. The second one took a point-blank bullet to the flashlight from Kol, then followed its companion. "Any volus college student could solve a problem like that in an hour or two, with the right charts, without using a computer."

"Oh, that's kind of neat." They strode out, walking along the walkway away from Kithoi Point and deeper into the wards. "Wait. You don't use omni-tools or anything for those?"

Leedar glared, or would have if any expression was visible behind the mask. "Of course not. That would be cheating. No volus accountant worth his fee uses a calculator program." He looked down at the assault rifle for a moment before trading weapons with his companion. Really, the very idea of him firing a weapon was absurd.

An elevator opened ahead of them, revealing a geth and three humanoid shapes. Covered in blue lines of light, they looked like cyborg human or asari, and snarled as they caught sight of their prey. In desperation, Leedar pushed the transmit button again. The geth slowed down, but the other three were unaffected as they ran forward. Desperately, he raised the pistol and pulled the trigger as fast as he could, eyes squeezed tightly closed.

When the gun beeped the overheating warning, he cracked his eyes open, peering through the smoky lenses of his suit. To his surprise, all of them were down, including the geth. Kol was fidgeting with his assault rifle, finally discarding it and taking the other one. "Nice shooting, boss. Took out that geth with a clean headshot."

"I did? I mean, of course I did." He stared at the elevator for a moment, then shook his head. "If we go down, there will be geth waiting for us. We should," he hesitated a moment before speaking again, "take the stairs."

The quarian stared down. "The stairs. You, on the stairs. Alright, this I have to see." Past the elevator was the door for the emergency stairs, and after a few moments it was cranked up far enough for them both to enter.

His suit hissed as he took a deep breath, staring down them. "I will conquer these stairs, for the glory of my clan, or I am not Leedar Bar," he stated firmly. A proud declaration, which lasted all of four steps. One of his feet slipped on the treads, and he went bouncing and rolling down the other nine stairs to crash into the wall on the landing. "Not. One. Word," he hissed out.

Kol, wisely, kept his vocal speaker off as he helped his boss back onto his feet. Though Leedar was pretty sure the slight tremble in the shoulders meant laughter. It just wasn't worth confronting him about it right now.

Five stories later, the volus sagged against the wall, exhausted beyond all belief. It's not just that he'd never taken part in any strenuous activity, but his anatomy worked against him too. Each stair was a comfortable height for every other species, but for him it was half the length of his leg. He'd fallen once more before getting the hang of it, but Irune just didn't have steep hills like this.

As he rested, he typed in another absolutely bizarre mathematical formula, his fingers the only part of him that didn't seem to ache. "So, uh, what happens when we make it to street level? Aren't the geth down there?"

He looked up at Kol's interruption, glaring. "For starters, there's several street levels. And the maintenance tunnels below that, though I don't know if the Keepers would treat us as a threat." He resumed typing, completing an estimated two and a half more lines of code.

"What happens if they do capture us before we get out?" The geth assault rifle was folding up at the moment, so instead of fiddling with it, the thin quarian fingers were washing themselves, over and over again.

"Then we die." Leedar looked up as the quarian leaned back in shock. "It's not my goal, but you don't handle millions of credits without learning how to accept risk."

Three and two thirds lines of code written before the next interruption. "What about an aircar? We could fly straight to the Presidium."

"There were no aircars flying. Either C-Sec grounded them, or the geth did." Leedar looked up, his frown hidden behind the mask. "Why am I telling you about the geth?"

Kol laughed nervously, his hands switching from their compulsive movement to gripping the railing. "I failed our Fleet History class in the flotilla."

Eyes squeezed shut, Leedar tried a human tactic of counting slowly to ten. When it was over, he did feel marginally less like shoving his technician down the stairs. Five more lines of gibberish, and he was done. "Alright, let's get moving." Levering back to his feet, he waddled towards the stairs again.

Three flights later, they paused near the door at the top street. That was the fun part about the wards, layers of streets depending on where you were, though technically most were more 'large public corridors' than open-air streets. Cracking the door open a bare centimeter, Kol stared outside. "No, there's geth out there. Definitely lots of geth."

They were down the next flight of stairs without their synthetic opponents noticing, and the first corridor was bare of anyone, organic or synthetic. "So, what now? Head for the Presidium?" Kol asked.

"There's a C-Sec office three blocks in that direction. Their normal response time is supposed to be under two minutes to our office, so either they abandoned it or the geth drove them out. However," Leedar said, holding up a cautionary hand, "they should have better weapons than scavenged geth rifles."

"You can break into a C-Sec armory?" Kol asked in astonishment.

"What? Of course not. That's what you're paid for," the volus replied.

"If we live through this, I demand a raise." They paused at the next intersection, hearing electronic warbling, but no geth were in sight as they hurried across.

"What for? You're paid better than most of the quarians on this ward!" Truthfully, he could probably afford to slip the quarian another two or three credits a week without impacting his profits. Actually, he could split it up amongst his clients and bill them for technical support, since Kol also encrypted all the data pads he had to keep. Win-win.

Kol glared over his shoulder. "For stopping those twisted whatever-they-were from tearing you out of your suit." _Yep, add billing for technical support to all clients once we get back to the office._

"We'll talk when we get back to the office about the details," Leedar promised.

Lapsing back into silence, they crossed another vacant intersection and up a ramp back towards the top level. Halfway there, a handful of geth emerged from a restaurant, leveling weapons at them. The transmitter fired instantly, turning the geth movements to glue long enough for the quarian to gun down most of them and Leedar to account for one of his own. The last one finally swung around at normal speed, the gun coming on point too slow.

Dropping the spent rifle, Kol grabbed two more from the fallen, running up the ramp. Only to turn around a moment later, tapping a foot anxiously as Leedar shuffled along as fast as his short round legs would let him. "Come on, we need to get out of here before more of them arrive!"

"I am moving as fast as I can. Volus are not built for speed," he huffed. They turned the corner on the ramp, skidding to a halt as they saw at least two dozen more geth standing there, rifles pointed. At the bottom, several more geth emerged from one of the corridors, blocking their escape.

"Any time now," Kol whispered.

"I already transmitted it, twice. If they already cracked it, it won't do us any good," Leedar said. He dropped the gun, tapping on his omni-tool quickly, every geth eye seeming to stare at him, following his finger movements as he hit send.

"What did you set them?"

"I asked how they feel. Theoretically, they shouldn't be able to-" His words were cut off as all thirty-plus geth broadcast a simultaneous electronic blat. "Well, it's been nice knowing you."

A moment later, all twenty geth before them were obliterated. The shockwave slammed both of them backwards against the wall, rattling Leedar as he rolled back and forth for several seconds. _I have never been so grateful to not have the ability to vomit_, he thought as he rolled back onto his feet.

In front of them, now blocking off the passageway, was a fairly large piece of an Alliance ship, named _Emden_ if the laser-scarred paint was an indication. Blinking in surprise, Leedar stepped forward, reaching one hand out towards the battered hull. "Well. That was fortunate." The air filled with the quiet ticking of cooling metal. "I thought the station arms were closed, though."

He turned around, intending to brag about their survival, only to find Kol unconscious. His suit didn't seem to be ruptured, at least, which Leedar would count as a win.

It would be such a pain to replace him, after all.

* * *

_Three months later_

Leedar smiled as the client left. Really, the destruction of their store wasn't his concern. They had paid for his accounting skills and they received them. Including the technical support charge.

Kol opened the door, carrying in the stack of data pads, when the console beeped. "Ah, good, Kol. As it happens, I have some good news and some good news for you."

"Alright, what's the good news?" the quarian asked, setting down the data pads.

"Well, first, as we agreed, I'm giving you a raise. You'll be getting nineteen credits per week instead of eighteen," Leedar said, walking towards the door.

"That's it? I still have that geth rifle, you know," Kol said darkly.

"Secondly, I arranged a bonus for you, in light of our recent escapade," Leedar continued unflappably, opening the door.

"Uh, a bonus? That's sounds better, but where are you going?" The quarian followed his silent boss outside to the walkway. Hanging outside, above Kithoi Point, was a barge carrier with about ten percent of an Alliance cruiser, the _Emden_, on it.

"Council salvage laws are quite clear, as it turns out. So, half of that is yours. You're not quitting right away, are you? Thanks to the destruction, tax season won't be over for – put me down, Kol! This is undignified! Why are you crying and laughing at the same time?"


End file.
